AMD may be looking to buy graphics company ATI Technologies, a move that would benefit the overall graphics industry, according to RBC Capital Markets. "The synergies of this seem consistent with the recent announcements by AMD to significantly increase capacity over the next few-years," wrote analyst Apjit Walia in a note to investors Wednesday. "We believe ATI is a rare-buy in the semiconductor space right now given the near-term tie-up dynamics."

Possibly. ATI has so far been the most friendly to the OSS community when it comes to specifications.(unless you want onboard, Intel opens up all their specs)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you are looking for OSS drivers the fastest card you can get is a firegl 8800.

Even though the DRI project only gets partial specs, it's still better than nothing. It'll be very interesting what happens in the future, because AMD(seemingly) has been more friendly with us than even ati.

I'm unconvinced that AMD would all of a sudden announce that all cards in the ATI lineup are now OSS, come look at the specs....

But with a company that's more friendly it'd be nice to see them increase the ATI/NDA program to the DRI guys so that it includes R300 series cards.

"Has so far"? My English teacher would have you kneel on the corner with your arms raised! "Once was" would do a lot better. There is no such friendliness in ATI nowadays: no info for the chips, and horrendous quality proprietary drivers for Linux.

I'm totally convinced that AMD will not show the specs for all ATI chips, but there is the remote possibility that they may show the docs for newer chips than vintage Radeon 8500s ... X800 architecture is not that different (it almost works with open drivers already), and would greatly improve the availability of hardware with open support. Let's hope that there is room for hope.